J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 182

An excellent catch by Bonnie Kavoussi. Bonnie Kavoussi: "...

An excellent catch by Bonnie Kavoussi. Bonnie Kavoussi: "A one-third reduction in the rate of new business formation, together with a steady exit rate, means that, on average, firms are larger and older today while also representing an increased share of employment." @jasonfurman and @porszag: https://piie.com/system/files/documents/wp18-4.pdf...

#noted

PREVIEW: Economic Growth in Historical Perspective: U.C. Berkeley: Spring 2020

After hearing Ellora Derenoncourt rave about being a TA for Melissa Dell and her Econ 142: The History of Economic Growth, I have decided to go full parasite and stand up my own version of the course for the spring of 2020 here at U.C. Berkeley. Tell me what you think! Here are my notes so far:

Course to be at: Teaching Economics: https://delong.typepad.com/teaching_economics/econ-135.html

Econ 135: Economic Growth in Historical Perspective

This course examines the idea and reality of economic growth in historical perspective, beginning with the divergence between human ancestors and other primates and continuing through with forecasts for the 21st century and beyond. Topics covered include human speciation, language, and sociability; the discovery of agriculture and the domestication of animals; the origins and maintenance of gross inequality; Malthusian economies; the commercial and industrial revolutions; modern economic growth; international prosperity differentials; OECD convergence and East Asian miracles; the political economy of growth and stagnation; and the stubborn persistence of poverty.

Assessment: Students are graded on the basis of five two-page triweekly response papers about the readings (20 points; 4 each), five triweekly problem sets (20 points; 4 each), two midterms (40 points; 20 each), in-class exercises (20 points, 1 point per class up to a maximum of 20), section exercises (1 point each), and section and lecture participation (10 points).

Jan 14: Introduction: Economic Growth in Historical Perspective, Human Beings and Their Economies

Jan 21: The Broad Sweep: Herding and Agriculture, Long Run Economic Growth and Stagnation, Growth Theory Basic Building Blocks, The Beginning of Modern Economic Growth, Modern Economic Growth and U.S. Economic Ascendency, Late Nineteenth Century Globalization/Retreat, Convergence and Its Absence, Why Did Sustained Growth Spread to Some Places and Not Others?, The Concentration of Wealth, The Flap of the Butterfly Wing

Feb 25: Midterm 1

Feb 27: A Tour of the Continents: Europe, The Americas, Long Run Economic Development in Asia and Africa, Behind the Iron Curtain, East Asian Miracles

Mar 17 Scattered Issues: Geography and Economic Growth, Growth and Fluctuations, Global Warming and Poverty, Trade and Development, Foreign Military Intervention, Foreign Aid, Kleptocracy and Organized Crime

Apr 16: Midterm 2

Apr 21: What We Know: The Pace of Economic Growth, The Meaning and Measurement of Economic Growth

Apr 28: The Future:

Apr. 30: Review Q&A

OVERVIEW: Malthusian Eras and After: Gregory Clark (2005): The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209-2003; Ian Morris (2010): Why the West Rules���For Now, Chapter 3 "Taking the Measure of the Past���. An overview of economic growth across time. How did people live in the past? For how long were the bulk of people living on about 2 dollars a day? When did this stop? How much economic growth has there been, and when did it take place?

The International Context Since the Industrial Revolution: Lant Pritchett (1997): Divergence, Big Time. An overview of post-1800 economic growth across space. How differently do people live depending on where they happen to live today? Where did these absurd differentials come from? When did these absurd differentials emerge?

The Uncertain Pace of Growth: William Nordhaus: Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? What do we mean by saying that economic growth has been 2% per year for the past century and a half? What errors do we make when we try to squash a multidimensional process down into one single number?

THE EAST AFRICAN PLAINS APE: Gift-Exchange and Human Sociability: Paul Seabright: In the Company of Strangers; Joseph Henrich (2016): The Secret of Our Successes: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making us Smarter. Chapters 1-5. You cannot have a society with more than one silverback gorilla, or more than ten male chimpanzees. Yet we have a largely-peaceful cooperative division of labor across the globe that puts pretty much everybody within, well, six degrees of economic exchange separation. Why do we do this? How do we do this? What does this tell us about economic growth?

Market Economies and the Division of Labor: Avinash Dixit: Economics: A Very Short Introduction; Adam Smith (1776): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. How much of our current wealth depends on our societal division of labor? How do we keep our current division fo labor going? How do we keep adjusting it���and how successful are we at doing so?

THE BROAD SWEEP: Malthusian Eras: Herding and Agriculture: Jared Diamond (1997): The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race; Jared Diamond (1997): Guns, Germs and Steel, chapter 4 pp. 85-92. What caused the transition to farming and herding and what were its consequences? In what sense was it, as Jared Diamond maintains, a huge mistake? For whom was it a huge mistake?

Patriarchy and the Upper Class: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012): Why Nations Fail, chapter 5 ���Growth under Extractive Institutions��� sections 1-3; The Man Who Saw All Things (Gilgamesh). Once we have herds and farms, we get gross inequality. How? And how does this maintain itself? Gilgamesh puts his pants on one leg ago a time like the rest of us, doesn't he?

Basic Growth Theory: David Weil (2005): Economic Growth, chapters 1 and 2. Basic theoretical building blocks: The Solow growth model. The poverty trap model. The role of resource scarcity. Determinants of the rate of inventive activity. Positive- and negative-sum entrpreneurship

High Civilization without a Technological Focus: The Maya: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012): Why Nations Fail, chapter 5 ���Growth under Extractive Institutions��� Section 4; Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube (2000): Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya, Introduction pp. 6-23, Tikal pp. 24-53, Palenque pp. 154-175, Copan, pp. 190-213; David L. Webster (2002): The Fall of the Ancient Maya, chapters 7 and 10. Why was economic growth not sustained at a faster pace for thousands of years after the Neolithic Revolution? People were smart, no, and there was low-hanging fruit, no? Why did a world of more than 2 dollars a day have to wait until post-1800? Looking at one western hemisphere case study

High Civilization without a Technological Focus: The Ancient Central Mediterranean: Karl Polanyi: Aristotle Discovers the Economy; Moses Finley: The Ancient Economy; Aelius Aristides: The Roman Oration; Willem M. Jongman (2007): Gibbon was Right: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Economy https://delong.typepad.com/jongman-gibbon-was-right.pdf; Ian Morris (2004): Economic Growth in Ancient Greece; Peter Temin: The Roman Market Economy. Why was economic growth not sustained at a faster pace for thousands of years after the Neolithic Revolution? People were smart, no, and there was low-hanging fruit, no? Why did a world of more than 2 dollars a day have to wait until post-1800? Looking at one eastern hemisphere case study

THE BROAD SWEEP: Post-Malthusian: Beginnings of Modern Economic Growth: Western Europe: David Landes (2006): Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?; Joel Mokyr (1990): The Lever of Riches, chapter 5 ���The Years of Miracles���. Why did sustained economic growth begin when it did? There are many theories about why the remarkable economic growth that has characterized the past 200 years began when and where it did.

Beginnings of Modern Economic Growth: Britain: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012): Why Nations Fail, chapter 7 ���The Turning Point���; Robert Allen: The British Industrial Revolution in Comparative Perspective. Why did sustained economic growth begin in England and not elsewhere? What processes were arithmetically and algebraically necessary to break out of the Malthusian poverty trap? There are many theories about why the remarkable economic growth that has characterized the past 200 years began when and where it did. Which ones are live? Which ones are worth betting on at low odds?

What-If?: Without the Industrial Revolution: What would a Gunpowder-Empire Present Look Like?

1870 as the Inflection Point: The further more than fourfold acceleration of economic growth that took place around 1870. How? Why? What difference did it make for human societies?

What-If?: Without the Acceleration to Modern Economi Growth: What would a Steampunk Present Look Like?

America Takes the Lead: Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz: The Race Between Education and Technology; David Donaldson and Richard Hornbeck: Railroads and American Economic Growth: A Market Access Approach. The world's leading growth pole jumps the Atlantic in the years after 1870. Why did the U.S. industrialize rapidly starting in the nineteenth century? Why did some parts of the U.S. industrialize earlier than others?

Characterizing Modern Economic Growth: The algebra of leading sectors

American Slavery: Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss (1981): A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy. Why did some parts of the U.S. industrialize earlier than others? What role did slavery and its legacy play in U.S. economic growth?

1850-1914 Globalization and Prosperity Advance: W. Arthur Lewis (1978): Evolution of the International Economic Order; Guillaume Daudin et al.: Globalization 1870-1914; Barry Eichengreen (2008): Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto; Norman Angell (1909): Europe's Optical Illusion. For the first time, economies find their standards of living determined by things happening far away. How do people and societies cope with the first globalized economy?

The Development of Underdevelopment Outside the North Atlantic: A number of what-if scenarios

1900-1935 Globalization and Prosperity Retreat: Vladimir Lenin (1902): What Is to Be Done?; John Maynard Keynes (1919): The Economic Consequences of the Peace; John Maynard Keynes (1924): The End of Laissez Faire; Karl Polanyi (1944): The Great Transformation; George Orwell (1936): The Road to Wigan Pier; Ernest Gellner (1973): Scale and Nation. The global market economy fails to deliver the Polanyian rights to community stability, "fair" incomes, and consistent employment that people think they have. And so society strikes back���profoundly stupidly���against the globalized classical liberal order.

The Absence of Convergence: J. Bradford DeLong (1986): Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare; Lant Pritchett (1997): Divergence, Big Time. Post-1870���hell, post-1800���there were no longer major physical impediments to the rapid flow of ideas, machines, and people across the globe. So geographical differences in prosperity levels were rapidly ironed out, right? WRONG!!

Growth Breakthroughs: Robert Allen: Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction. What had to go right for countries to gain or maintain a place among global prosperity leaders?

Poverty Traps: Aart Kraay and David McKenzie (2014): Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence. Could countries that were not among global prosperity leaders escape their relative poverty? If yes, why did so few do so? If no, how did the few that managed do it?

Geography: Jeffrey D. Sachs (2003): Institutions Don't Rule: Direct Effects of Geography on Per Capita Income; Jared Diamond (1997): Guns, Germs and Steel, chapter 4 pp. 85-92; Melissa Dell et al. (2009): Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates. How much was and is your prosperity predetermined by your geography?

Institutions: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2006): Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth. Nearly all today agree that it is easier to move people to where the good economic-growth institutions are than to move good institutions to where the people are. But what are these "good institutions", exactly? And how can they be hard to move in a world of lightning-speed high-bandwidth communication?

Culture: Nathan Nunn (2012): Culture and the Historical Process. What do we mean when we say thinks like "culture has a profound influence on prosperity?

Plutocracy: Industrial-Society Birth Pangs: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto; Karl Marx (1849): Wage-Labor and Capital. Why and how did inequality rise wherever industrial civilization took hold?

Plutocracy: Broad Patterns: Thomas Piketty: Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. We have seen one and a half enormous waves of within-nation inequality since the start of the Industrial Revolution: within-nation inequality advances, retreats, and advances again. How did this happen?

Plutocracy: The Second Gilded Age: Paul Krugman (2014): Why We���re in a New Gilded Age. Drilling down into the post-1980 return of Gilded Age-class inequality in the North Atlantic.

Path Dependence in the Small and the Large: Paul David (1985): Clio and the Economics of QWERTY; Melissa Dell (2015): Path Dependence in Development: Evidence from the Mexican Revolution; Hoyt Bleakley and J. Lin (2012): Portage and Path Dependence. The Flap of the Butterfly Wing: Path dependence and economic development: Many of the studies considered thus far examine how major ways in which societies were organized historically can have important long-run consequences for economic growth. To what extent do smaller, typically inconsequential events have important long-run impacts? How much should our view of the world be one in which the influence of history can be very non-linear and highly persistent?

A Tour of the Continents: Reversal of Fortune?: Daron Acemoglu etc al., (2002): Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution. _Hangzhou, Delhi, Baghdad, Cairo, perhaps Tenochtitlan���if you had had to bet in 1300 where the economic capital of the world would be in the late-20th century, you would have bet on one of these, not New York. It did not happen. Why not?

Europe: Britain: Joel Mokyr: The Lever of Riches, chapter 10 ���The Industrial Revolution: Britain and Europe���. Looking back in much more detail at the boom in the supply of labor-saving coal-using technologies in Britain, and what followed from that

Europe: France: Daron Acemoglu et al. (2009): The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution. Feedback from the fall of France's Ancien r��gime to economic development.

Europe: the Rest of the Continent: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2006): Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective. Once the trail to industrialization is blazed, how does the fact that followers can see where to go but are not there help or hinder?

The Americas: Bad Institutional Luck?: Melissa Dell (2010): The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita. Why is the U.S. much richer than Latin America? Why are some places in Latin America so much poorer than others? Does inequality play a role in explaining these income differences? What about other differences in historical institutions?

The Americas: Bad Factor Endowment Luck?: Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff (2002): Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economics. How and when and how much can a prosperous past be a burden? How general a phenomenon is the "resource curse"?

The Americas: Toward a Synthesis: John Coatsworth (2008): Inequality, Institutions and Economic Growth in Latin America; John Coatsworth (2005): Structures, Endowments, and Institutions in the Economic History of Latin America. What are the prospects for Latin American convergence in get net fifty years?

Africa: Slavery: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2010): Why is Africa Poor?; Nathan Nunn: The Long Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades; Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon (2011): The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa. Africa is the world's biggest economic development emergency. It is tempting to blame slavers and slavery. But African retardation relative to the other non-North Atlantic economies is a post-1950 phenomenon. How do we make sense of this?

Africa: Geography: Nathan Nunn, and D. Puga (2012): Ruggedness: The Blessing Of Bad Geography in Africa. Does geography still matter for Africa?

Africa: Colonialism: S. Michalopoulos and E. Papaioannou (2014): National Institutions and Subnational Development in Africa. Colonial boundaries and African retardation

Southeast Asia: Melissa Dell et al. (2015): State Capacity, Local Governance, and Economic Development in Vietnam; Anthony Reid (1993): Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, chapter 1 ���The Age of Commerce, 1400-1650���, chapter 4 ���Problems of the Absolutist State���, chapter 5 ���Origins of Southeast Asian Poverty���. The burden and the blessing of a noble-bureaucratic past

The Middle East: Sevket Pamuk (2014): Institutional Change and Economic Development in the Middle East, 700-1800. State, society, and economy in the Islamic world

Behind the Iron Curtain: Really Existing Socialism?: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto; Vladimir Lenin (1902): What Is to Be Done?; Rosa Luxemburg (1918): The Russian Revolution; Richard Ericson: The Classical Soviet-Type Economy: Nature of the System and Implications for Reform. Why was Lenin so sure central planning was the way to go? Why did it work so badly? Lots of highly productive corporations are centrally-planned economies, after all

Is Russia a North Atlantic Economy?: Robert Allen (2011): The Rise and Decline of the Soviet Economy. Is Russia a North Atlantic economy that has done badly or a non-North Atlantic economy that has done well?

World War II and the Value of Magnitogorsk:

After the Fall: Simeon Djankov (2015): Russia's Economy under Putin: From Crony Capitalism to State Capitalism. If you could drive to Frankfurt and back in a day, you did well after 1991. Elsewhere, not. Why?

East Asian Miracles: Background and Foundations: Peter Evans (1995): Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, chapter 1; Dwight Perkins (2013): East Asian Development: Foundations and Strategies, chapter 3 ���Government Interventions versus Laissez-Faire in Northeast Asia.

Japan:

Taiwan and Korea: Dani Rodrik: Getting Interventions Right: How South Korea and Taiwan Grew Rich

The Central Country: Yingyi Qian; Xiaodong Zhu (2012): Understanding China���s Growth: Past, Present and Future.

When Will the Asian Century Begin?:

SCATTERED ISSUES: Secure Property Rights and Growth:

Mafiyas: Charles Tilly (1974): Forward to A. Blok: The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs; Melissa Dell (2015): Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War; D. Gambetta (1996): The Sicilian Mafia: The Business Of Private Protection, chapter 1.

The Past and Future of Manufacturing Export-Led Growth:

Growth and Fluctuations: The Great Depression and World War II: John Maynard Keynes (1926): The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill; Christina D. Romer (2013): Lessons from the Great Depression for Policy Today; John Maynard Keynes (1931): Unemployment as a World Problem; Taylor Jaworski and Price Fishback (2014): World War II

Growth and Fluctuations: The Asian Crisis of 1998 and the Great Recession of 2009: Andrew Berg: The Asian Crisis; Philip Lane: The European Sovereign Debt Crisis; Lawrence Summers: Reflections on the ���New Secular Stagnation Hypothesis

Global Warming: Melissa Dell et al. (2012): Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century. How is global warming impacting economic growth?

Global Warming and Global Poverty: Melissa Dell et al. (2014): What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy, sections 1 and 3. Does it differentially impact poorer countries? Will it increase conflict?

Soft-Power Pressure, Neo-Imperialism, and Growth: Melissa Dell and Pablo Querubin (2016): Nation Building in Vietnam; C. Appy (2015: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity; A. Dube et al. (2011): Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information. What are the impacts of foreign military intervention on governance, civic society, and economic development? Can a state be built in a weakly institutionalized society through military intervention, or is such an approach likely to backfire? How does politics in the intervening country impact how foreign interventions are conducted? We examine these questions in the context of one of the largest foreign nation-building interventions of the past century: the Vietnam War.

Foreign Aid: Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian (2014): U.S. Food Aid and Civil Conflict; Alberto Alesina and David Dollar (2000): Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why? Can foreign aid be an effective means of promoting economic growth? This lecture will consider a range of evidence, from the Marshall Plan and economic aid to East Asia in the 1950s to food aid today.

Technical Assistance: J.A. Yage (1988): Transforming Agriculture in Taiwan: The Experience of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, chapter 1.

Trade and Geopolitics: D. Berger era al. (2013): Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade During the Cold War.

Investment and Development: H.W. Singer (1950): The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries.

Trade and Development:

Value Chains and Development: D. Atkin (2014): Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico

Value Chains and Growth

The Information Age:

WHAT WE KNOW: The Pace of Economic Growth:

The Meaning and Measurement of Economic Growth:

The Twentieth Century: Andrea Boltho and Gianni Toniolo: The Assessment: The Twentieth Century.

The Near-Term Future of Economic Growth: The North Atlantic: Robert Gordon: The Turtle���s Progress

The Near-Term Future of Economic Growth: The World: Dani Rodrik (2013): The Past, Present and Future of Economic Growth.

The Near-Term Future of Economic Growth: Economic SuperPower Succession

The Singularity

80 Minute Lecture Skeleton:

Warm-Up (10 minutes):

1 qualitative review question
1 BIG IDEA question
1 calculation question
2 minutes: what did we learn last time?
5 minute discussion

 

3 Core Modules:

(17 minutes): Lecture/Document/Tools/Tools Application/Open-Ended Question Discussion
(3 minutes): Structured Review Questions
(3 minutes): Pick 2 or 3 from 5 questions: calculation, main point takeaway, why aren't answers 25-25-25-25?, why this is important, what didn't I say?

 

Afterwards:

1 free-form lecture response question (response emailed)

In-class exercises: 1/3 of a point for answering more than 2/3 of iClicker questions; 1/3 of a point for getting at least 1/3 of iClicker questions right; 1/3 of a point for post-lecture response...

#teachingeconomics #economicgrowth #economichistory #berkeley #highlighted




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Note to Self: Are all the cool kids still writing weekly ...

Note to Self: Are all the cool kids still writing weekly email newsletters? If not, why no longer? If so, why?

#notetoself #weblogging

Note to Self: F--- you, @jack. Twitter keeps���somehow���...

Note to Self: F--- you, @jack. Twitter keeps���somehow���reversing my view from "Latest Tweets" to your algorithmic "Home", showing me first tweets I am likely to engage in. But tweets I am likely to engage in are not the tweets I want to see. You are hacking my brain, @jack���and not in a good way.

Thus you have made yourself my enemy: Things that advertise on Twitter I will not buy. Opportunities for me to cheaply degrade your reputation and reduce your wealth I will gladly take advantage of.

Quite stunning that you have developed such potentially useful tool, @jack, and yet have managed to make yourself so thoroughly my enemy, isn't it? One might say it requires a close-to-unique talent...

#twitter #publicsphere #moralresponsibility #orangehairedbaboons #fascism #notetoself #highlighted

Did they actually achieve de-entanglement and re-coherenc...

Did they actually achieve de-entanglement and re-coherence here? It looks like it to me. But whaddooeyeno? G. B. Lesovik, I. A. Sadovskyy, M. V. Suslov, A. V. Lebedev, and V. M. Vinokur: Arrow of Time and Its Reversal on IBM Quantum Computer: "The arrow of time... within the framework of statistical physics... [is] the second law of thermodynamics... entropy growth proceeds from the system's entanglement with the environment.... Whether the irreversibility of time... might be circumvented.... While in nature the complex conjugation needed for time reversal is exponentially improbable, one can design a quantum algorithm that includes complex conjugation and thus reverses a given quantum state... on an IBM quantum computer... backward time dynamics for an electron scattered on a two-level impurity...

#noted

Raymond Aron (1955): Nations and Ideologies: Weekend Reading

This is the best expression of the end-of-ideology "managerialism" theses of the Great Post-WWII Keynesian Boom���Les Trente Glorieuses. It is remarkably early: 1955. And it is 100% correct that those who tried to apply a pre-WWI socialist or a Leninist frame to the state of the world after World War II were hopelessly wrong, and would up naked on the moon. And that is if they were lucky. Aron, of course, took the defeat of fascism as the Red Army turned Hitler's Berlin into rubble in 1945 as permanent. And Aron mistook the Eisenhower wing of the Republican Party for the beast. And maybe he would have been right if not for Goldwater:

Raymond Aron (1955): Nations and Ideologies: "WE are becoming ever more aware that the political categories of the last century���Left and Right, liberal and socialist, traditionalist and revolutionary-have lost their relevance. They imply the existence of conflicts which experience has since reconciled, and they lump together ideas and men whom the course of history has drawn into opposing camps. How can one describe as "extreme Left" the Soviet regime which identifies society with the state? Is it possible to see it as a continuation of the struggle against arbitrary rule, or as favouring individual freedom and the control of government by the governed? Or again, when a parliament of "Pashas" is dissolved by a group of army officers sincerely concerned for national independence and economic progress, who then establish a military dictatorship, what is the correct word to describe their regime?...

...Is it accurate to describe as "liberal" Dr. Erhard���s policy in Western Germany, or as "socialist" the policy of Mr. Gaitskell under the late Labour Government? And from which doctrine should the present practice of Mr. Butler be derived?

I do not believe it is impossible to bring order into this ideological chaos, but it is essential first to recognise how controversies change their significance from one country to another. The same words are used, but the realities to which they refer are different.

 

1. The Debate in Britain

TWO facts dominate the British situation: first, the prevailing democratic institutions are unchallenged, and second, socialism (which in Britain has never been doctrinaire or Marxist) represents the present rather than the future, is a fact rather than a programme. Party conflicts and intellectual differences neither are, nor even appear to be, of truly vital concern to any section of the community. Whatever view the nation may finally adopt, no one will have to sacrifice any value he deems essential. Agreement upon the general lines of foreign policy and upon the community���s fundamental "way of life" is almost unanimous. If and when the British are in error, they err resolutely and all, or nearly all, together.

The limitations and drawbacks of the experiment once known by the name of socialism were gradually revealed by experience. Socialists were disappointed, and their opponents were relieved, when their dream (or their nightmare) came true; and passion on both sides died away. "So that���s all it amounts to," they said with a sigh���in the one case of regret, in the other of relief.

The economic potential left untapped by the former regime was not such that full employment could suddenly release a flood of unparalleled wealth. But neither Conservatives nor Socialists would tolerate a return to the stagnation and unemployment of the years between the wars. Moreover, they know, or think they know, how to control the trade cycle���atleast sufficiently to avoid the ravages of a major depression. The techniques of economic stability and expansion are no longer the patent of one party or one doctrine; they have quite lost their ideological colouring.

Nationalisation of the means of production has been followed neither by miraculous benefits nor by disaster. In itself, it has had little effect upon the workers��� conditions or upon industrial relations. It is not free from certain of the disadvantages of private trusts and monopolies; and while it dearly abolishes the political influence formerly available to the magnates of industry, it still allows the directors of public enterprises the chance to obtain certain privileges for themselves or, more especially, for their undertakings.

REDISTRIBUTION of wealth in Britain has succeeded in reducing the highest incomes and eliminating cases of extreme poverty. But in the long run a family of modest means loses as much or more through crushing taxation as it gains in free social benefits. The victims of Labour���s revolution have been, above all, the salaried middle class and its intellectuals, upon whom cultural continuity and scientific progress depend.

People do not argue any longer for or against state interference in economic affairs, but only about the most effective form of such interference and how to adapt administrative decisions to the mechanism of the markets. Practical experience of planning has induced a good many economists to moderate the hopes they placed in it, has taught the all-out supporters of full employment the difficulty of combining this with stable prices, and has led many Keynesians to prefer indirect financial and budgetary controls to direct methods. These controversies evoke no heat, even among specialists. But there are intellectuals who seek to raise the temperature. Death duties amounting to confiscation are called for in the name of equality; and a few voices are raised for further nationalisation���either to facilitate planning or to give the workers a greater interest in the control of industry. But these specifics, which are to be found in the New Fabian Essays, have little appeal for the people, or even for political leaders. It is more or less confusedly realised by leaders and people alike that the real historical problem is a different one: namely, how can society combine a fair distribution of income and security for the individual with the incentives which are necessary if wealth is to be increased? The problems raised in England by the Labour experiment are related philosophically and historically to the antinomy between contented security and adventure for gain, between equalitarian justice and the justice of rewards���an antinomy whose resolution calls for a reasonable compromise and not a clear-cut choice.

For the time being, a non-millennial socialism and a non-reactionary conservatism offer England a peaceful government and a peaceful opposition. When Sir Winston used a version (somewhat simplified) of the argument of Hayek���s book, The Road to Serfdom, as ammunition in the 1945 election, his allusions to Mr. Attlee���s "Gestapo" merely provoked laughter. Theorists may insist that Labour will end, however unintentionally, by creating a totalitarian state, but the British are not inclined to worry about the day after tomorrow; and today Mr. Bevan is a pillar of parliamentarianism. No "leftist" sees any merit in Communism as far as Britain is concerned. The Bevanites, more insular than anybody, believe that the Labour Party should be the model for the whole world, though they concede that Communism may be "progressive" for Asia, for Africa, and even perhaps���who knows?���for France.

Controversy in Britain does become heated when it touches upon the United States and the U.S.S.IR. and the case for or against a capitalist or Soviet regime. Left-wing intellectuals in Britain are as ready as those on the Continen tto denounce American "materialism," "ineptitude," or "bellicosity." Like their Parisian friends of Les Temps Modernes and l���Observateur, they play down the military threat of Communism and emphasise the danger of its political influence; they pin all their hopes to an unlimited application of Point Four and are indulgent to the cruelties of Russia while implacably condemning any error or folly or infraction of liberty in the United States. Their No. 1 target is McCarthy and not the MVD, and their tears are for Alger Hiss and not the victims in concentration camps. Yet these intellectuals remain firmly fixed, in practice if not in theory, within the framework of British society. In France, the popular front, in China, Stalinism, maybe the way of salvation���but for Britain, Queen and Parliament suffice. In all countries, nationalism works strange paradoxeis in the soul of the intellectual.

 

2. The Debate in France

FOR twenty-five years, a vast literature has been accumulating around the political,
economic, and social aspects of the Third and Fourth Republics. The voting habits of the different regions, the constitution of the political parties, and the workings of parliament have all been studied. Demographers have analysed the causes and effects of a reduced birth rate and economists have done the same for a retarded economic development. Much still remains to be known, but the general outline of France's contemporary problem has been clearly established: weakness of the executive, insufficient economic dynamic, extreme diversity of agriculture from region to region, fiscal and customs legislation favouring the survival of too many small-scale businesses, excessive growth of the tertiary sector of the economy, an unrationalised distributive system, and so on. Foreign criticisms of France rely for all their ideas, facts, and statistics upon French books, including official publications. Never has a nation known so well what was wrong with it.

According to Marx, the concentration of capital would proceed to its extreme limit���but we find French socialists and trade unionists lamenting an insufficient concentration of French capital. It require sa lot of dialectical imagination as well as considerable ignorance to attribute the survival of a decentralised productive system to the machinations of "the Trusts." The anomaly to be explained might be called "the retarded economic progress of a Western society" or "the tendency of a petit-bourgeois society to stagnate."

Thisproblem is recognised by sociologists and economists, and not completely ignored by men of letters. But the latter are generally more concerned to replace the specific national problem by what appears to be a universal one, and they achieve this by transposing the real data of the situation into Marxist terms. You may find side by side, in the same work, an empirical study of the French working class and a quasi-metaphysical speculation upon the historical mission of the Proletariat. The former will be prosaic and accurate, the latter inspirational and, in most cases, meaningless.

Consider the periodicals in which the Existentialists, "progressives," and left-Chririans write. They are full of para-Marxist notions like the revolution, the recognition of Man by Man,and the Meaning of History. Just as the intellectuals of Germany around 1930 wereelaborating the millennial Marxist themes with variations from Kant and Hegel and Heidegger, our French intellectuals today are re-vamping them in the Sartrian or the Christian mode.

IS FRANCE going through a crisis comparable to that of Germany in the years before Hitler
came to power? There are certainly some analogies, but there are also fundamental differences. French intellectuals feel humiliated, deep down, by their country���s fall; and their reaction to this unacknowledged shame is to rebel against the world around them, assisted by escapist ideologies with universal and millenial pretensions. But the social situation in France today is quite different from that in Germany in 1930. There are no millions of unemployed nor uprooted masses ready to follow any adventurer. Discontent is widespread and endemic, but does not exclude an unexpressed wish to safeguard a familiar way of life. It does not imply a desire for change at all costs.

It is true that a great many French workers, perhaps the majority, vote for the Communist Party; but the Communist infiltration into the working-class industrial and political movement is of more help to conservatism than to radicalism. It is easy to rally the moderates in all classes against a party directed from abroad. The adherence of a large part of the French working-class to Communism presents left-wing intellectuals with an agonising choice. As anti-Communists, are they not the enemies of the Proletariat? (Sartre dixit: "To oppose the Proletariat is to become the enemy of mankind and of oneself.") As Communists, will they not have retroactively to ratify the Hitler-Stalin pact as a step towards the liberation of humanity, denounce Beria as a capitalist agent, and accept dialectical materialism as the final achievement of philosophy? At odds with their country, which they believe is sinking into mediocrity, allied to the Proletariat whose historic mission they acknowledge, recalcitrant to Communist discipline, they give vent to their frustrations by vituperating the United State and the Atlantic Pact.

The controversies of French intellectuals gain in resonance as they move further from reality. It is the French who provide the left intelligentsia all over the world with the arguments and ideas that throw a cloak of philosophic respectability over le double refus. The means for speeding up France���s economic progress interest only the specialists; the intellectuals are interested in the debate on "Revolt" and "Revolution." So vague are its concepts and so noble the words that clothe them, so ill-defined is the subject of debate, that even the Japanese, oblivious of crude reality, have seen in them the reflection of their own preoccupations.

The subject of the debate in Britain is technical; in France it is ideological. In the first case, all are agreed about fundamentals and the discussion is about questions of degree and the efficaciousness of methods; in the second, the facts are forgotten and an attempt is made to force into a framework, derived from Marxism, a historical situation which could easily be understood, on the simple condition of not approaching it with out-of-date concepts.

In politics, action is more likely to succeed when thought corresponds to fact; and in
France the two are out of step. Yet, in the intellectual sphere, the effort and the reward are less disproportionate. The discussion is sterile when it concerns ill-defined notions (for example: Is the Soviet Union the embodiment of the revolutionary cause?) or false ones (the absurd belief that a property system, as such, can be responsible for a nation���s wealth or poverty). poverty). But, if the French debate often loses itself in abstractions and anachronisms, it sometimes touches the essential. A radical questioning of industrial civilisation or of working-class reformism goes deeper than a reasonable discussion of the Welfare State or of economic incentives���though these latter considerations certainly have more bearing upon the prosperity of nations.

 

3. The United States and Germany

BRITAIN and France, respectively, represent the extremes of relevanceand irrelevance between a nation���s real situation and its social-economic ideologies. Most of the European nations can easily be identified with one or other of these types: the Scandinavian nations and Holland with the British, Italy with the French. Belgium, although so much exposed to French influence, shows in politics an increasing resemblance to the British type: its Communist party has continuously declined ever since the first elections after the war, and the leftism of its "progressives" appears more and more as a fashion imported from Paris.

It is possible to adumbrate a sociological or historical explanation of these two contrasted types. Countries of the first type have a relatively high standard of living and have experienced no recent revolutionary upheavals. In all of them (except Belgium) the Protestant reformation won the day; they belong to the sea-faring and merchant-city zone of European civilisation; and they have developed moderate socialist movements which by-pass the dilemma of status quo vs. revolution. France and Italy, on the other hand, are Catholic countries in which the permanent the Church inevitably assumes a political complexion. In both countries, economic progress and higher living standards for the workers have been retarded through the survival of under-developed areas. And both have, by virtue of their large Communist movements, suffered a seccessio plebis.

Germany and the United States will not fit into either of these categories. If we accepted the current language of social-economic controversy, we should be in danger of seeing Germany, less than ten years after Hitler���s death, as the fatherland of "social liberalism" (soziale Marktwirtschaft), while the United States would seem to have been saved in the nick of time, by the Republican victory of 1952, from a socialist invasion led by the Democrats. But once again the facts are quite different.

As regards Western Germany, the decisive fact appears to be the complete collapse of the two German ideologies���Marxism and Nazism���which aimed at the conquest of the world. The Germans have lived the nationalist frenzy through to its bitter end, and their experience of the Soviet regime is incomparably more direct than that of any other West European people. For the present, they are immune to certain arguments and certain illusions. An orator, even if he were a French philosopher, who tried to explain to German workmen that the prohibition of strikes and the suppression of free unions is legitimate in Russia because the workers are in power there, would not be allowed to finish his speech. Unlike the French philosophers, the German workers know what life under the Communist Party is like. The majority of them continue to vote socialist, but all the evidence shows that they no longer subscribe to Marxist ideas. They refuse to listen to the once-classic themes of Class Struggle and Revolution. They have become as reasonable and empirical as the British workers, though with this difference���that they have lived through the messianic temptation, while the British ignored it. Purged by catastrophe���for the time being, at least���Germany prides itself on reviving the pure liberal doctrine.

It is a pious claim which cannot be said to be completely fulfilled. The entrepreneurs or managers in the Ruhr still possess exorbitant power, and the structure��� and functioning of the economy are far from conforming to the classic liberal model. It is true that Chancellor Adenauer���s government allows freer markets than are to be found in other countries. But the foundation of Western Germany���s spectacular recovery has been hard work,the volume of investment and construction, and the moderation and discipline of the workers���all of which have perhaps been encouraged, but certainly not created, by Dr. Erhard���s policies. The Federal Republic���s climate is conservative, bourgeois, and nationalist in the style of Kaiser Wilhelm���s bourgeoisie, but worlds away from that of the Nazi desperadoes.The overriding preoccupation is economic and not ideological. Communism and Russia are identified, and equally hated; American productivity is admired; and there is no remaining trace of that blend of philosophy with politics which characterised the Weimar period and is today so attractive to the French intelligentsia.

In the United States there appears to be a passionate political and ideological controversy all the time. The violence of the language suggests that fundamental issues are involved; but in reality little more is at stake than in Britain. The polemical vehemence of the daily and weekly press is a part of the country���s political style; but it is also a result of the incongruity between the party ideologies and the changing realities of the last twenty-five years.

Many Republicans still hate Roosevelt as they hate their country���s enemies���Roosevelt who brought socialism to America, Roosevelt who created the Leviathan State. The old American society, as the typical Republican imagines it, was a model of liberalism. Its prosperity grew from individual initiative; it prevented the growth of the federal budget and federal taxation; it tolerated no meddling in the nation���s economy by government officials; it eschewed wholesale social services. An individualistic society like this probably never existed except in theory, and in any case could not now be revived. When the Republicans returned to power after twenty years, they laboured to reduce taxation by a few billions, dismissed some tens of thousands of officials, and tightened the control of credit, but they left the essential work of the Democrats untouched. Social services will continue to expand, agricultural prices will be maintained, and national prosperity will still be the Government���s responsibility. In case of economic crisis, or the threat of crisis, the Republican method of intervention will perhaps be slightly different from the Democratic. Republicans prefer tax relief and Democrats public spending; the former are more afraid of inflation, the latter of deflation. Their differences are at bottom much the same as those between Conservatives and socialistsin Britain.

The Republicans try to make their audience���s flesh creep by the same methods as Sir Winston Churchill in the 1945 election. TVA, they howl, is the thin end of the Gestapo���s wedge. Socialised medicine and a low interest-rate are denounced in the United States as though they must inevitably lead to the MVD. It would be a mistake to regard such accusations as a mere electoral ruse. They are, on the whole, sincere; and, although those who make them may not have read Hayek and Mises, they have instinctively developed the same mentality. They attribute a sort of absolute value to free markets and regard any manipulation of prices by the government as a profanation. Private initiative is regarded as intrinsically good and the development of governmental activity as intrinsically bad. And in the end these reasonable preferences become fanatical. In a sense, the fanaticism of leftist doctrinaires is really less unreasonable, because the champions of socialism think they possess the secret of salvation. But liberals, who put their faith in men���s natural instincts, ought not to be surprised if the individual fails to see a competitive economy as the supreme goal. They should remember that although "May the best man win" is a popular slogan in sport, there are not so many people who accept it as a rule for life.

The superficial violence of dispute by no means precludes a proud sense of American uniqueness when compared with Europe, and enlightened opinion is implicitly or even explicitly unanimous upon a fundamental point, "The American Way of Life." No one judges the European (and especially the French) industrialist more severely than his American counterpart. When the members of the National Association of Manufacturers denounce the "feudalism" and the greed for high profits from small transactions of their European counterparts, they are indulging a repressed desire to see themselves as "progressives."But is it a true description to say that the American economy is alertly competitive, and that the European ones are stagnating under cartels and controls? What appears to me incontestable is
that any "competitiveness" in the American economy is not due to its structure but to the spirit that animates it. The structure cannot be called liberal in contradistinction to a socialist structure in France or Britain, for it is exposed to much the same sort of "socialist" intervention as European economies are accused of. Such competition as there is can often be described as "oligopolistic" rather than classically liberal. Geography, history, and social climate changes as you cross the Atlantic, as they do between Germany and Britain; and these national contrasts have not much connection with what are called ideological differences.

Opinion in the United States almost unanimously accepts the present system. No alternative is apparent either to the intellectual or to the man in the street, and, in effect, there is none. Should a crisis comparable to that of 1929 occur���which I do not think likely���it would be met by some form of planning (which would nevertheless be claimed as liberalism). The present regime has created immense wealth and distributed it among the people. Inequality has diminished proportionately with the rising standard of life. The approach of the United States to these objectives���which were and are also those of the European Left has been empirical. What motive is there for resisting the process? For the sake of what could a revolution be made?

But there is still much to criticise, and especially the tendency to conformism which results from the loss of messianic hope. Even the war of the American Left against the trusts and the concentration of economic power is losing its point. American thinkingis in need of "dissidents," but there is a danger that dissent will adopt out-of-date ideologies instead of pin-pointing the problems and injustices which official optimism tends to gloss over.

At the moment the two great current controversies are those about McCarthyism and about the correct policy towards Communism in Asia and Europe. McCarthyism raises the question of civil liberties and of what measures a free society is justified in taking against conspiracy and infiltration. Unfortunately, the debate remains confused because both sides resort to "amalgams"; both "McCarthyism" and "Communism"become in the minds of their adversaries a sort of huge morass with no firm outline. As regards Communism, American scholarly literature seems to me the best available in the Western world. On the other hand, current controversy confuses two questions which a realistic approach would separate: namely, what should our opinion be about this or that aspect of Communism in China, Poland, etc., and what should or can be our action in regard to Soviet power in Europe and Asia? Condemnation of Communism too often becomes a sort of refusal to look at the unclean thing or even to admit its existence.

Once again, as in Britain though in a different way, the ideological dispute is concerned less with the country���s internal affairs than with foreign affairs. In the long run, there is really no controversy in America except about Communism, which nevertheless all are touchingly unanimous in condemning.

 

4. Outside the Western World

France and Italy have large Communist parties, and the other Western countries have small ones which are centres for espionage and conspiracy rather than proper political organisations. In both cases, Communism is a serious problem of internal or foreign policy, but in neither is it a serious intellectual problem.

Roughly speaking, there are two ways of adhering to Communism. The militant Communist accepts the world-view and the changing interpretations of history imposed upon him by authority ; the intellectual, on the other hand, takes the official doctrine with a grain of salt but accepts Communism as the best regime for industrialising under-developed countries, as the "inevitable" outcome of Europe���s decline, and so on. If an important number of intellectuals accepted the orthodox doctrine, Communism would be an essential element of Western intellectual life. But such is not the case.

Orthodox Communism consists in forcing events totally unlike those foreseen by Marx into the millenary Marxist scheme. For it, the capture of power in Russia by the Bolshevik party was the first stage of the historic mission attributed by Marx to the Proletariat. Having baptised the Party as "vanguard of the Proletariat," it equates all its victories with Proletarian victories. Wherever Stalin or Malenkov reign, the Proletariat is mystically liberated. It follows that the old familiar practices of despotism, furbished with modern techniques, become the embodiment of "socialism." Every revolution engineered by the Red Army in Europe and every revolution organised by the Communist Party in Asia, controlled by intellectuals who manipulate the peasant masses, will be called socialist and will claim the author of Das Kapital as its founder.

This is a paranoiac interpretation of history. WhatMarx hoped was that the victory of the working class would lead to a universal distribution of the profits from highly developed productive forces, profits which���so he thought���would be restricted under capitalism to the few and would produce increasing poverty for the masses. But the Communist revolutions are imposed before the productive forces have been developed, while the Western countries are distributing ever more widely the profits accruing from technical progress. Soviet regimes certainly develop the means of production, but they sacrifice very much more to what Marx called "accumulation" than capitalist society ever did.

I am not here concerned to discuss the merits or demerits of the Soviet regime, either in Russia or China. It is unnecessary to make it the incarnation of Evil or a unique event in the annals of crime. There are enough facts accepted by critics and supporters alike to enable us to place the regime in history, as one among others. If liberty and equality are the test of socialism, no regime could be less socialist than that of the U.S.S.R. It has restored a rigid hierarchy, with a new ruling class; factory discipline is stricter than in capitalist countries; poweris in the hands of a small group which took possession of the state by violence, and is kept in power by police and propaganda. Admittedly, it has built up an immense heavy industry and given the country an unprecedented war potential. Let us pay tribute to the organising power which carried through this vast industrialisation.

But why should we do what has never before been done in history���why should we regard the builders of empires or pyramids or marble underground stations as benefactors of humanity? To what extent is the Soviet type of overall planning an efficient one? There is no answer to this question that would be accepted by all economists. But no serious economist would maintain that an industrial society must inevitably resort in the end to planning of the Soviet type; nor is there one who believes that the American or British economic systems must lead to poverty for the masses and economic stagnation. Most economists, even those who sympathise with Communism, consider the present Soviet regime a prelude to the Western type of economy rather than a postscript to it. Or again they may expect a gradual rapprochement of the two worlds, through liberalisation in Russia and intensified planning in the West.

Marx���s philosophy and theory provide no firmer ground than does his economic analysis for the Communist interpretation of contemporary history. There is no Western philosopher who takes dialectical materialism for anything more than an ideology of a state or a secular theology; and even socialist- minded economists reject the Labour theory of value. Someone may detect in Das Kapital a foreshadowing of Keynesian ideas; but a serious intellectual who calls himself a Marxist accepts neither Stalin���s philosophy nor the theories of Das Kapital. It is not impossible that the Soviet Union, fortified by the revolutions in Asia, and possessor by conquest of Eastern Europe, may succeed a few years or a few decades from now, in destroying Western society; but this does not mean that Communism is a serious intellectual movement. A few hundred divisions and an ideology for the use of semi-intellectuals are enough to create a menace.

Those who join the Party without accepting the official doctrine are numerous, and it is easy to explain their actions. It is necessary and sufficient in each case to discover why the peasant, worker, or intellectual feels himself aggrieved and alienated from his own country, why he expects nothing from reform and places all his hopes in the Fatherland of the Revolution. Nevertheless, the fact that the Soviet Union, which is in reality so Russian, attracts the rebels of the whole world through an ideology borrowed from the West, has important political consequences.

COMMUNISM���S attractive power is strongest where it can justify itself realistically (speeding-up of industrialisation) and ideologically (the Party as "vanguard of the Proletariat" with its historic mission). In a sense, this is the case in France, whose polytechniciens are irritated by her tardy economic progress. It is even more so in the under-developed countries where the scope and significance of ideologies from Europe and America are distorted by the historical background.

In Europe, a political and economic ideology is concerned with the no-man���s-land which is at stake in party struggles. It ignores the family and everyday life, and all the ideas and habits inherited from pre-industrial times. The controversy between conservatism and progress is fruitful because tradition is not seen as an obstacle to economic progress, which is itself a development from the traditional past which it is desired to conserve or extend. In the Far East, on the other hand, the controversy is between the West on the one hand and Chinese, or Japanese, or Indian cultures on the other; and on the social-economic plane this controversy is bound to end in favour of the West, for all nations aspire to the wealth and power derived from machines and technical prowess.

The East has had to create what was "given" for the West. In the 19th century, there were discussions in the West about the source of legitimate power and the forms of authority; but economic progress was equally compatible, in bourgeois France for example, with constitutional or with absolute monarchy, with caesarism or with a republic. In China, however, the first condition of economic progress may well have been a modification of the family structure and the creation of a Western type of bureaucracy. European political ideologies take on a new colour when it is a question of bringing into existence new familial and state institutions which the Western doctrines do not mention because they take them for granted.

Since progress in the social-economic sphere is almost unanimously accepted as an imperative
(the ruling class and the intellectuals in Asia and Africa are now practically without a trace of Gandhi���s hostility to the machine), the real choice is between reforms and revolution; and this is easily translated into European terms as Socialism or Communism. But the terms thus translated disguise the enormous difference between the Indian and the British situations, or between the Russian and the Chinese.

India may provide a minimum wage, guarantees against arbitrary dismissal, and social regulations in industry; but these measures do nothing to eliminate the causes of extreme poverty. All they do is give an additional advantage to those lucky enough to have jobs in factories over the countless unemployed in town and country alike. To give priority to fair shares and individual security is really impracticable in conditions of famine when the first essential is to produce as much as possible.

Indian intellectuals, like those of Oxford and Cambridge, believe in parliamentary methods; they are generally "pinks" of the same shade as the New Statesman. The difference is that, instead of governing 50 million Britons who respect their Queen and Parliament and have enough to eat, they have to govern 365 million Indians, 85 per cent of them illiterate, who have been accustomed for centuries to obey their masters and to have no say either in affairs of State or in their own. Can the place of an emperor, whether Mogul or British, be taken by a political class playing the parliamentary game?

As for China, she is beginning her Soviet experiment with even scantier resources in technicians and machinery than the Russia of 1913; but in spite of this, her imitation of the Russian model is less awkward than India���s attempt to copy Britain. A tyranny can effect changes more easily than a democracy, and Russia���s technique of forced saving under the control of Party and police is an easy one to export.

In Japan, the old ruling class of pre-industrial times was able by itself to Westernise the state and property institutions, the industrial and educational systems, while maintaining the country���s independence. Today, after the imperialist adventure and defeat, the intelectuals are suffering from this national humiliation and are contemplating the drab future which opens before themselves and their countrymen. Japan is the most highly industrialised country of Asia, with the highest living standards; but its intellectuals, like those of France, feel alienated because they have lost their old gods and are intensely aware of the discrepancy between their wishful dreams and the reality they have to face. One finds among the Left in Japan the same frustration and
nostalgias as in France, and the same camouflage of authentic experience and conflict under a more or less vulgarised Marxism.

In China, a Communist party of the Soviet type which breaks up the traditional structure of the family, purges the classic culture, and constructs a planningState; in Japan, intellectuals who feel half-estranged from their stricken country and borrow their anti-Americanism and their Leftism from the French intelligentsia; in India, intellectuals with democratic values acquired from Britain but governing in a totally different situation...

The Soviet Union, France, and Britain provide the models, but what are such models worth in Asia?Is not the true issue, hidden behind social-economic controversies, the clash between the West and the national cultures of the East?

 

5. Conclusion

In most Western societies, ideological controversy is dying down because experience has shown that divergent demands can be reconciled, and has refuted the exaggerated hopes placed in Revolution. There is no incompatibility between political liberty and wealth, or between free markets and a higher standard of life. Indeed, the highest living standards have been attained in democratic countries with a relatively free economy.

As industrial civilisation develops, tensions arise between the concern for equality and
individual security and the concern for increased production. With full employment and the danger of inflation, there is a struggle to maintain freedom of wage agreements. The limits of possible redistribution of income are revealed, and also the effects of excessive taxation upon savings and upon the financing of capital goods. There is no final solution to these dilemmas, but the reasonable anxieties they evoke do not give rise to any fundamental conflict. Indeed, it is precisely over degrees and methods of compromise that the political parties carry on their debate.

The apparent ideological chaos is due to a misinterpretation of the interaction of disparate events; the crises taking place in some Western societies, the African and Asian revolt against the West, and the attraction of the Soviet Union (which is derived less from what it is than from what it claims to be). In reality, the alienation of the intellectuals and the grievances of the workers in France are due to the specific conditions of French society; similarly, the action of the Communist party machine, and its organisation of the peasant masses, can also be specifically explained, but not in terms of capitalism or socialism.

I am not here concerned to discuss how the Asian and African independence movements can be weaned from totalitarian methods, or how countries that have achieved independence, but are still weak, can be protected from sovietisation. But one thing is certain: the West should begin by getting rid of its inferiority complex before the idea of "Revolution". Some revolutions have been sterile, and others fruitful. Some have replaced the old elite by a more efficient one, swept away petrified institutions, and opened the way for new initiatives. But the revolutions of the 20th
century have settled down into long-term despotism, prolonging for decadesthe phenomena of terrorism which used to be characteristic of the first revolutionary frenzy. The Soviet phenomena, therefore, need neither perplex nor fascinate Western intellectuals, provided only they consent to open their eyes and refrain from seeking an impossible perfection in human society.

Moreover, revolutionary ardour has cooled down in the last twenty-five years. Yesterday, the French intellectual who symbolised revolution was Malraux���a fighter in China and Spain, author of La Condition Humaine and L���Espoir. Today, the revolutionary activity of Sartre fizzles out in interminable essays about the Proletariat. As Marx said, we live twice through the same events, first tragically and then comically.

#weekendreading #politicaleconomy #equitablegrowth

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Joakim Book: Mr. Darcy���s Ten Thousand a Year

Susie Madrak: Rep. Escobar: 'We Have A President Who Has Created An Addiction To Hate': "I'll tell you, that clip, when I saw it last night, it made me very, very sad, very sad for our country, that we are at such a moral rock bottom," Rep. Escobar said...

Nancy LeTourneau: Why Is Trump So Afraid of Mueller?: "The fact that the Commander in Chief is describing an investigation conducted by his own administration as ���treasonous��� ranks right up there with some of the worst. Why would Trump be so afraid of what Mueller has to say, especially when he claims that the special counsel���s report totally vindicated him? It could be because Mueller has earned a tremendous amount of political capital by conducting himself as the consummate professional surrounded by a sea of angry lunatics otherwise known as the Trump administration...

Paul Mason: Reading Arendt Is Not Enough: "Arendt���s descriptions of the dynamics of totalitarian movements hold good���... [but] her explanations for them do not.... If Trump has triggered a crisis of progressive thought, it is in particular a crisis for the cult of Hannah Arendt. The United States of America was her last and enduring hope: the only political institution on earth that was supposed to be immune to totalitarianism, nationalism, and imperialism...

Martin Wolf: How Our Low Inflation World Was Made: "Where has this left us today? Not where we would like to be, is the answer, in three respects. First, while financial and household debt have fallen relative to incomes in mature economies, that is not true for debts of governments or non-financial corporates. Second, the transatlantic crisis triggered offsetting debt explosions elsewhere, notably in China. Third, crisis-hit economies are still far below pre-crisis trend output levels, while productivity growth is also generally low. Finally, the populist politics of left and right remain in full force. All this is in keeping with past experiences with big debt crises, which have always thrown long shadows into the future...

Plutarch: Life of Tiberius Gracchus: "This is said to have been the first sedition at Rome, since the abolition of royal power, to end in bloodshed and the death of citizens; the rest though neither trifling nor raised for trifling objects, were settled by mutual concessions, the nobles yielding from fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate. And it was thought that even ��p193��on this occasion Tiberius would have given way without difficulty had persuasion been brought to bear upon him, and would have yielded still more easily if his assailants had not resorted to wounds and bloodshed; 2��for his adherents numbered not more than three thousand. But the combination against him would seem to have arisen from the hatred and anger of the rich rather than from the pretexts which they alleged; and there is strong proof of this in their lawless and savage treatment of his dead body...

It is power and surveillance rather than worker displacement that is the principal issue on the table with respect to automation for the next decade, and probably for the next two decades: Brishen Rogers: Beyond Automation: The Law & Political Economy of Workplace Technological Change: "This article unpacks the relationship among advanced information technologies, employment law rules, and labor standards. Based on a detailed review of the capacities of existing technologies, it argues that automation is not a major threat to workers today, and that it will not likely be a major threat anytime soon. Companies are, however, using new information technologies to exercise power over workers in other ways, all of which are enabled by existing employment laws. For example, they are increasingly using algorithms to monitor, direct, or schedule workers, in the process reducing workers��� wages or autonomy. Companies are also using new technologies to ���fissure��� employment: outsourcing work tasks or processes and then disclaiming legal duties toward workers, all while closely monitoring workers��� performance. These findings have policy implications. If the major threat facing workers is employer domination rather than job loss, then exotic reforms such as a universal basic income are less urgent. Rather, policymakers could expand the scope and stringency of companies��� duties toward their workers, and/or enable workers to contest the introduction of new workplace technologies...

Danny Blanchflower: Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?: "Don't trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fine���it isn't. Not Working is about those who can���t find full-time work at a decent wage���the underemployed���and how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism.... Blanchflower draws on his acclaimed work in the economics of labor and well-being to explain why today's postrecession economy is vastly different from what came before. He calls out our leaders and policymakers for failing to see the Great Recession coming, and for their continued failure to address one of the most unacknowledged social catastrophes of our time. Blanchflower shows how many workers are underemployed or have simply given up trying to find a well-paying job, how wage growth has not returned to prerecession levels despite rosy employment indicators, and how general prosperity has not returned since the crash of 2008.... Blanchflower practices the 'economics of walking about'���seeing for himself how ordinary people are faring under the recovery, and taking seriously what they say and do. Not Working is his candid report on how the young and the less skilled are among the worst casualties of underemployment, how immigrants are taking the blame, and how the epidemic of unhappiness and self-destruction will continue to spread unless we deal with it...

Our massive economic overreliance on formal education, coupled with a high school system that appears half a century out-of-date and no alternative to standard or semi-standard college is not serving us well: Kyle Herkenhoff: The Case for More Internships and Apprenticeships in the United States: "Learning from co-workers accounts for 24 percent of the aggregate U.S. human capital stock. Roughly 40 percent of a typical worker���s human capital is accumulated on the job, and of that human capital accumulation, 60 percent comes from learning the skills of co-workers. These benefits of learning from co-workers could be increased markedly, however, if U.S. policymakers encouraged more firms to offer internships, apprenticeships, and other types of mentoring such as vocational training. But this is easier said than done. In the U.S. labor market,... not enough mentorship relationships are formed between high- and low-skill workers. If low-skill workers are able to leave immediately after learning new skills, then their employers have little incentive to train and educate those workers. But, from society���s standpoint, we want those low-skill workers to be taught so that they produce more and eventually go on to train the next generation of workers.... A simple 3.6 percent tax break on the wages of interns, or a 3 percent tax break on the wages of mentors (defined to be those whose primary capacity is to work with interns), would generate welfare gains of roughly 2 percent per annum in the long-run...

Over the past generation, tax avoidance and evasion have gone from an annoyance to a major societal catastrophe: Annette Alstads��ter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman: Tax Evasion and Inequality: "Why do the rich evade so much? The straightforward answer is because they can. There is a whole industry ��� in Switzerland, Panama and other tax havens around the globe ��� that provides wealth concealment services to the world���s wealthiest individuals. This industry typically only targets the very wealthy (people with more than $20 million or sometimes $50 million to invest), since serving too many would-be evaders would increase the risk of these banks and law firms being found in violation of the law. Moderately wealthy individuals (those below the top 0.1%) do not have access to the services they sell and therefore don���t evade much tax. Further down the ladder, the majority of the population only earns wages and pension income, which cannot be hidden from the tax authority...

The creator of the World Wide Web tries to provide some guidelines for getting it back onto a useful course: Tim Berners-Lee: The World Wide Web Turns 30. Where Does It Go From Here?: "The web has become a public square, a library, a doctor���s office, a shop, a school, a design studio, an office, a cinema, a bank, and so much more. Of course with every new feature, every new website, the divide between those who are online and those who are not increases, making it all the more imperative to make the web available for everyone.And while the web has created opportunity, given marginalized groups a voice, and made our daily lives easier, it has also created opportunity for scammers, given a voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit...

Are We Approaching Peak Human?

Andrew Carnegie (1889): Wealth: An Historical Document: "No substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department...

John Maynard Keynes 1926): The End of Laissez-Faire

Chris Hughes: It���s Time to Break Up Facebook

Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: [Beware of Billionaires Peddling Solutions for Extreme Inequality(https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bew...): "Ray Dalio���s diagnosis of capitalism���s flaws repeats disproven tropes about technology, skills and productivity...

William H. Townsend: Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1789120489

David Petriello: The Days of Heroes Are Over: A Brief Biography of Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson

Newspapers.com: Louisville Courier-Journal

Noah Smith: ���Smart Beta��� Might Not Be So Smart After All: "Research suggests that factor investing���s success will be fleeting...

Econ 115 Lecture: September 24, 2009: The Knot of War, 1914-1920 and After

[This Time, It Is Not Different: The Persistent Concerns of Financial
Macroeconomics(https://delong.typepad.com/20120411-r...)

Reed College Public Policy Lecture: November 7, 2009

Review: Robert Skidelsky (2000), John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain

Review: Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed and The Economist as Saviour

The Great Depression from the Perspective of Today, and Today from the Perspective of the Great Depression

Jenny Lawson: The Bookmobile: "The San Angelo Museum of Fine Art owns it now.... They considered my offer to take it off their hands but they want to rebuild it and use it the way it once was. ��And I was disappointed, but honestly also relieved because it probably belongs there, with people who can love it and bring it back to its former glory...

National Park Service: Secret Symbol of the Lincoln Memorial: "Repeated elsewhere in the memorial, the fasces throughout the Lincoln Memorial reveal the higher meaning of the memorial and the man. In ancient times, fasces were a Roman symbol of power and authority, a bundle of wooden rods and an axe bound together by leather thongs...

#noted #weblogs

The creator of the World Wide Web tries to provide some g...

The creator of the World Wide Web tries to provide some guidelines for getting it back onto a useful course: Tim Berners-Lee: The World Wide Web Turns 30. Where Does It Go From Here?: "The web has become a public square, a library, a doctor���s office, a shop, a school, a design studio, an office, a cinema, a bank, and so much more. Of course with every new feature, every new website, the divide between those who are online and those who are not increases, making it all the more imperative to make the web available for everyone.And while the web has created opportunity, given marginalized groups a voice, and made our daily lives easier, it has also created opportunity for scammers, given a voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit...

#noted

Over the past generation, tax avoidance and evasion have ...

Over the past generation, tax avoidance and evasion have gone from an annoyance to a major societal catastrophe: Annette Alstads��ter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman: Tax Evasion and Inequality: "Why do the rich evade so much? The straightforward answer is because they can. There is a whole industry ��� in Switzerland, Panama and other tax havens around the globe ��� that provides wealth concealment services to the world���s wealthiest individuals. This industry typically only targets the very wealthy (people with more than $20 million or sometimes $50 million to invest), since serving too many would-be evaders would increase the risk of these banks and law firms being found in violation of the law. Moderately wealthy individuals (those below the top 0.1%) do not have access to the services they sell and therefore don���t evade much tax. Further down the ladder, the majority of the population only earns wages and pension income, which cannot be hidden from the tax authority...

#noted

Our massive economic overreliance on formal education, co...

Our massive economic overreliance on formal education, coupled with a high school system that appears half a century out-of-date and no alternative to standard or semi-standard college is not serving us well: Kyle Herkenhoff: The Case for More Internships and Apprenticeships in the United States: "Learning from co-workers accounts for 24 percent of the aggregate U.S. human capital stock. Roughly 40 percent of a typical worker���s human capital is accumulated on the job, and of that human capital accumulation, 60 percent comes from learning the skills of co-workers. These benefits of learning from co-workers could be increased markedly, however, if U.S. policymakers encouraged more firms to offer internships, apprenticeships, and other types of mentoring such as vocational training. But this is easier said than done. In the U.S. labor market,... not enough mentorship relationships are formed between high- and low-skill workers. If low-skill workers are able to leave immediately after learning new skills, then their employers have little incentive to train and educate those workers. But, from society���s standpoint, we want those low-skill workers to be taught so that they produce more and eventually go on to train the next generation of workers.... A simple 3.6 percent tax break on the wages of interns, or a 3 percent tax break on the wages of mentors (defined to be those whose primary capacity is to work with interns), would generate welfare gains of roughly 2 percent per annum in the long-run...

#noted